The last democratic World Cup?

LONDON: Like a time-honored ritual, the run-up to any world-class sporting event is always the same. A few months before, the stadiums aren’t ready and the hotels have no hot water. The highways are dirt tracks and the athletes have nowhere to sleep. The local newspapers predict calamity. Will the beach volleyball final not be held for lack of a net? Will the qualifying match between Paraguay and Ivory Coast be abandoned because the referees couldn’t land at the unfinished airport?

But it never happens. Somehow, the Olympics, or the World Cup, or whatever impossibly extravagant spectacle is in question, always goes on. The South Africans or the Russians or the British work all day and all night, throw money at the infrastructure and pull it off: The basketball arena is finished, the ski jump is a triumph.